Chapter 3
SIRENS CIRCULATING LIbrARY, A WEEK LATER
This place had been on Blaze’s mind for a week solid.
He’d fought returning.
God’s truth, he had.
But it was no use.
His mind was like a terrier with a rat when it got something between its teeth.
It wasn’t about to let go.
So, he was back—but not without a plan of action.
The plan went like so—be the first patron of the day…charm Mrs. Dunlevy into signing his name in the members register…scud it straight to the room with all those Greek histories no one seemed to like…and stay no longer than an hour.
That way, he shouldn’t be bumping into any angelic ladies with too-inquisitive minds.
Now, his hour was nearly up, and he had naught to show for it but five open books sprawled across the table before him and…nothing.
He hadn’t known exactly what would happen, but he’d half hoped if he stared long enough at those strings of letters all lined up in neat, little rows, he’d suddenly be able to read.
But, naw, these words kept their legs crossed at the knees and refused to reveal the goods to him.
With a heave of frustration, he shoved back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes drawn to the ray of sunlight pouring through the large east-facing window.
Maybe the Divine would see fit to throw some inspiration his way.
But in his experience, dealings with the Divine were all hard graft, weren’t they?
It either made you work very hard or ask very nicely for its providence.
He glanced at his pocket watch.
His hour was up.
A wasted hour.
He’d just reached out to close the last book when a voice came from behind him. “Oh, you’ve got the Virgil.”
Blaze’s eyes squeezed shut, and he could’ve groaned.
In fact, he did.
When he opened his eyes, there she was, standing beside the table, smiling down expectantly at him.
And blow him down if she didn’t look lovelier than he remembered.
It was all that Divine morning light having its way with her—picking up the red-gold of her hair…
making clear blue pools of her eyes…glistening across those pretty pink lips of hers.
“I just love The Aeneid,” she said. “Have you got to the part where Aeneas meets Dido?”
He sucked his teeth. “Not as such.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat.” She exhaled a resigned sigh. “Though it does end in tragedy. But then the most beautiful love stories do.”
“They do?”
And here he thought all love stories in books ended with and they lived happily ever after.
Of course, most real love stories didn’t.
But that was why they called it fiction, wasn’t it?
She reached for the book. “Shall we read lines together?”
A glint sparked in her eyes as she asked the question, and Blaze understood something.
His bluff had just been called.
He’d thought her an angel, but this capital L lady had a little devil taking up residence inside her, didn’t she?
Like that, the game turned into something he was familiar with.
Drawing the moment out slowly, as he was wont to do in such situations, he closed the last open book, then arranged all five tomes into a neat stack, settling back in his chair. As he rocked the front feet off the floor, his fingers laced behind his head—and he met her too inquisitive gaze.
This woman was either Lady Saskia or Lady Viveca Calthorp.
He knew that much, for upon leaving this lofty establishment a week ago, he’d made it his express business to learn everything there was to know about Sirens Circulating Library.
The name should’ve been the tip-off.
Sirens.
The name the current Calthorp family had been called before the brother, Gabriel, had up and become a duke overnight.
That turnabout had the haut ton crying into their teacups, it had.
Which Blaze had observed from afar with no small amount of delight.
It ever did his heart some good to see society set on its ear every so often.
And while he might not know how to decipher words on a page, he did know how to do this—how to read a person…
Then how to intimidate them into turning tail.
“What game are you trying to play?”
He’d come within a hairsbreadth of affixing little girl to the end of the question, but naw. This lady might be young—he’d guess around twenty—but steel ran through the translucent blue of her eyes.
He knew game when he encountered it—and this lady had a purpose in calling his bluff.
“You don’t know how to read,” she said, blunt and plain as if she were informing him of the state of the weather.
Blaze froze.
The air did, too.
But not his heart—which pounded—and not his blood—which rushed through his veins and carried the familiar wave of shame straight through to every last one of his cells.
No matter how high he rose in the world, there was always this tethering him to the quicksand that wanted naught more than to suck him back down to where he belonged…into nothingness.
Somehow, he opened his mouth and said, “Aye,” as if it were a matter of little importance.
That was how a nob would term it—a matter of little importance—and look you straight in the eye and dare you to say otherwise.
Her head tipped to the side. “Yet you’re a member of a circulating library.”
“What strange happenings abound in this old world.”
A smile flickered about her pretty pink mouth. “You do have a way with words.”
“I’ve picked up a few over the years.”
“But not from books.” That curiosity in her eyes hadn’t cooled by a single degree. “That’s where most people get them.”
“Oh, the likes of you would be utterly gobsmacked to hear all the diamonds of words being laid out on them London streets, just waiting to be picked up.”
“The likes of me?”
He sucked his teeth. “Well, a lady.”
She nodded, slowly. “I know something else about you.”
“That so?”
“You’re Blaze Jagger.”
“And you are either Lady Saskia or Lady—”
“Viveca.”
Now it was him nodding slowly. “Lady Viveca, it is.”
He was certain her name held meanings he didn’t know, but it sounded very much like the word vivid, and that was a word that suited this woman—exceedingly. Didn’t vividness just radiate off her?
Her gaze narrowed a hair, and a particular tension pulled through him. She was about to reveal her game. Even the molecules of the air knew it, so still they’d gone.
“I could teach you, you know.”
Instinct lifted its head and perked all Blaze’s senses into vivid life. He hadn’t survived the streets of East End London without heeding this instinct when the fine hairs on his neck prickled to a stand.
This wasn’t an offer rooted in the good of Lady Viveca’s heart.
The partial truth of her offer was there in that word—could.
And the rest of the truth lay curled within the other word behind it, the one not yet spoken—if.
She could teach him how to read, if…
“Could you now?” he asked, all outer ease and inner wariness.
“Oh, yes.”
The affirmation was breezy—too breezy.
Her eyes guileless—too guileless.
He didn’t trust it.
“Out of pure altruism, I suppose.”
Nothing in life came for free, his tone implied below his words.
She bit her pretty pink bottom lip.
He hadn’t even the bud of an idea what she would say next, but he already half thought he would agree to any proposition put forth by Lady Viveca Calthorp. Just to see where it led. For within the clarity of her eyes, he detected something more—an edge…a fearlessness.
That was it.
This lady was afraid of nothing.
Not even Blaze Jagger.
“Well, you’re Blaze Jagger,” she said.
“A fact established.”
If she didn’t get to it, he might crawl out of his skin. A novel experience. He was usually the one putting the screws to the other person.
“By every account,” she continued, “you’ve lived quite a life.”
“You can’t go believing everything you hear.”
This last was spoken with his most roguish smile.
“You’re being evasive.”
“It’s that quite a life I’ve lived, pet.”
A smile tipped her mouth, and Blaze found his gaze lingering on her pretty pink lips a beat too long. Lady Viveca’s were the sort of lips that would be very, very good at kissing.
“Would you like me to be your pet?”
The split of a second later, the question registered in Blaze’s brain, and the front feet of his chair crashed onto the floorboards with a heavy thud. Plainly, he’d been caught on the back foot, and while he couldn’t say he liked it, he might admire it.
Would you like me to be your pet?
The brass.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or run.
Run, he should definitely run.
“Would you prefer me as a cat?” she continued. “Or as a dog? Parrots are rather nice pets, I’ve heard.”
For some reason, Blaze found himself giving it a think. “Cat?”
What was this conversation?
She nodded, a little smile curling the corner of her mouth. “Their fur is much softer for stroking.”
Blaze swallowed. He had to. Otherwise, the tidal wave of pure lust that assailed him at the silken notion of stroking Lady Viveca would overwhelm what little good sense he had left in his noggin.
Her smile widened. “You will have to pardon my humor, Mr. Jagger. It’s not for everyone.”
Would the ground never firm up under his feet?
“Show me,” she said, a new light of determination in her eyes.
His brow dug trenches into his forehead. “Show you?”
That was his other question answered, though.
Naw, the ground didn’t firm up beneath a man’s feet when he was dealing with Lady Viveca Calthorp.
“I know how to read,” she said. “You don’t.”
Did she have to keep rubbing it in?
“You have lived quite a life,” she continued. “I haven’t.”
“All right,” he said slowly.
“We each have something the other wants.”
“You want quite a life?”
“I do. A bite of it, at least.”
“You don’t.”
This he knew.
No lady truly wanted a bite of the life he led. What they’d all wanted—to a one in fact—was a taste of him.
There was a difference, they all learned.
“Don’t you see?” she asked.
Lady Viveca had gone all fervent, and while Blaze could hardly abide fervency in a person, hers was strangely appealing.